Michelle Rhee wants no part of Michelle Malkin in ANY debate, yet alone one on Common Core. This weeks appearance on FOX News didn’t go as well for Michelle Rhee as she had hoped as she didn’t get the puff ball questions she assumed she would. Writing in the popular conservative web site, American Thinker, Ann Kane noticed:

In response to Rhee’s praise of the Common Core Standards on Fox News’ Special Report with Bret Baier, conservative political commentator Michelle Malkin wrote that she would be willing to go on the air to debate the school reformer.

During the Baier interview, Rhee repeated the talking points that the CCS are internationally benchmarked and that every school district has the ability to choose its own curriculum to fit the standards. Neither of these assertions is true.

There is no proof that Common Core has met international benchmarks, and most available curricula and assessments have been created for the standards. Where’s the choice in curricula?

Rhee revealed her bias toward the substandard Common Core a year ago, but only after she had completed the directive of getting Republican governors across the country to buy into the Eli Broad/Bill Gates brand of education reform.

At the same time as Rhee was peddling her policies of eliminating teacher tenure, tying students’ grades to teacher pay, increasing testing, and collecting data of students’ information, her StudentsFirst colleagues and creators of Common Core, David Coleman and Jason Zimba, were busy selling the Common Core to those same governors.

Michelle Malkin detests Common Core, so it makes sense that she would want to debate anybody who supports it. This would be a welcome change from the typically fawning conservative media over Rhee.

Kane and her co-author, M Catherine Evans have done much good reported about Rhee’s corrupt tenure at DC Schools along with her sordid efforts to dictate education policy on behalf of the Hedge fund billionaires who finance her empire. While the two have reported factually on all things Rhee, their Common Core efforts are clouded by their far-right hysterical application of communism and their consistent failure to rarely mention Jeb Bush their writing. Republican governors would never have gotten on board with Common Core and the Obama-Duncan Race to the Top bribe if it hadn’t been for Bush’ Godfather-esc influence.

Baier’s tough questioning flustered Rhee into spouting Common Core talking points like stating the demonstrably false statement that Core is “internationally benchmarked.” Worst for Rhee was that conservative icon George Will appeared with Baier at the end of the show and gave one of the most blistering dismissals of Core ever:

The advocates of the Common Core say, “If you like local control of your schools, you can keep it, period. If you like your local curriculum, you can keep it, period.” And people don’t believe them, for very good reasons.

This is the thin end of an enormous wedge of federal power that will be wielded for the constant progressive purpose of concentrating power in Washington so that it can impose continental solutions to problems nationwide.

You say it’s voluntary. It has been driven by the use of bribes and coercion, in the form of waivers from No Child Left Behind, or Race to the Top money, to buy the compliance of these 45 states (two of which . . . have already backed out). . . .

They’re going to align the SAT and ACT tests with the curriculum. They’re going to align the textbooks with the tests. And, sooner or later you inevitably have a national curriculum that disregards the creativity of federalism.

What are the chances . . . that we’re going to have five or six creative governors experimenting with different curricula, or one creative, constant, permanent Washington bureaucracy, overlooking our education?

We’ve had fifty years . . . of federal involvement that has coincided with stagnation in test scores across the country.

Will finished his commentary with a prediction that a supporter of Common Core, like Jeb Bush, would not be able to win enough primaries to win the republican nomination for President in 2016.

Rhee, who is used to fawning coverage on Rubert Murdoch’s FOX News must have felt blindsided. Good. Moreover, neither Baier, Will nor FOX News chairman Roger Ailes are going to be receiving rebukes from Murdoch. They’re too big, too talented and too important. Neither will Rhee ever agree to a debate with someone like Malkin, who is every bit as informed on Core as Rhee and much better on the big stage in a hostile environment. Like Jeb Bush, Rhee never puts herself in a position to be contradicted on education policy.

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About Bob Sikes

A long time ago and a planet far, far away I was an athletic trainer for the New York Mets. I was blessed to be part of the now legendary 1986 World Series Championship. My late father told me that I'd one day be thankful I had that degree in teaching from Florida State University. He was right and I became twice blesses to become a teacher in the late 1990's. After dabbling with writing about the Mets and then politics, I settled on education.